Travel Blog

I have a sick husband and a sick dog at home, so no pictures still. Please forgive me, mom.

We spent our one day off yesterday traveling for 14 hours to Sioux Falls and back to pay our state taxes on the new RV. I knew we should have been paying more attention to the fact that our temporary tags were expiring soon (tomorrow), but it just slipped my mind. All my past purchases have involved the dealership taking all my money and then I get my tags and plates in the mail. You know, the civilized way of doing business. Well, this RV dealership waits until two days before taxes are due and mails YOU the paperwork and tells you to get to your county treasurer before the 30 days are up. But at least they were nice enough to send us a check in the amount we had already paid them for the taxes...made out to Custer County Treasurer. Too bad our permanent residence is not in Custer County. We live in Sioux Falls, which is Minnehaha County.

So we called our loving and lovely mail forwarding service, who helps RVers deal with this sort of mess, and they verified our supspicions that Minnehaha would not take kindly to us paying Custer County instead of them, and they informed us that penalties would start accruing if we went past the 30-day timeline. So Phil and I decided to just pony up the $600.00 bucks ourselves and drive to Sioux Falls and get it all taken care of in person. We did call the RV place to inform them of their mistake, and to ask them to PLEASE write out a check made out to us because we were going to pay Minnehaha out of our own humble checkig account, and we would come on Friday to pick up the check and get it back into our bank account so we wouldn't be skint for a week until payday.

The trip to Sioux Falls wasn't bad. We got to drive past the Badlands and the famous Wall Drug and a lot of other cool-looking places that we'll go back to on subsequent day offs (days off?). We couldn't stop yesterday, however, because our poor little pug, Willoughby, had diarrhea. Do you know how fun it is to take a car trip with a dog with diarrhea? After the first fecal explosion that happened while we were inside a convenience store getting coffee, at least we knew that once she starting to pant, we had better pull over for the next eruption. We must have timed it wrong on the way home, though, because before I could pull over (we were about 50 miles from home), she exploded all over Phil. And since his overshirt had already been hit in the first incident at the convenience store (it had been lying on the seat), Phil made the last leg of the trip shirtless.

But we got to Sioux Falls and found the treasurer's office ok, and I stayed in the car with the dogs and the air conditioning while Phil went inside to pay. And it was a good thing we were there in person because the tax man said the RV dealership did the paperwork incorrectly, and actually even overcharged us on the taxes, so we ended up saving some money, which was good because we spent 100 bucks in gas to get there. And the tax guy said the dealership was going to be getting an interesting letter from him because of all the mistakes.

So that was our day off. Phil had the added discomfort of becoming ill yesterday. We're not sure what's wrong, but we think it's acid indigestion. With the stress and all the coffee and everything, we are hoping that's what it is. If he isn't feeling better by Tuesday (thank you, Memorial Day weekend), he's heading to the clinic.

So poor Phil had to get up early and head with me to Whitewood to the RV dealership so they could reimburse us for the taxes we paid out of pocket. We get there, and I tell Phil to stay in the car and I would take care of it, and I go in, give them their incorrect check and receive a new check...made out to Minnehaha Treasurer. WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I told the lady we had spent the whole day yesterday paying our taxes, and Phil had asked her to make the check out to us instead of the treasurer's office, but she insisted that he told her to make the check out to Minnehaha. If I can backtrack a bit, she never said she was sorry for her mistake with the first check. In fact, she didn't even say hi to me or smile or anything. She was on the defensive from the minute I walked in. She was a real bitch to me, actually. She said she guessed she could write out another check made out to us, but no one would be around to sign it, so...At that point I lost it and asked to speak to anyone in charge, but no one apparently was in charge there. So Phil came in and confronted the woman, who was already complaining about us to one of her coworkers, and the woman decided that it was time for her to take her break, got her purse and left the building. So we spoke with our salesperson, and told him our story, and also told him we thought he was great, and up to then, our experience had been fine, but that the woman really ruined our day. And we left, kind of miffed. But our sales guy called us right away, and said he would make sure we get our check very soon, and yadda yadda yadda. We thanked him, and reitterated that he was great, but that woman should be sent to customer service school. No wonder Phil has acid indigestion, huh?